This invention relates generally to systems and methods for managing authentication procedures and, more particularly, to systems and methods for monitoring compliance and enforcing the use of a range of authentication methods as within specific constraints.
Financial transaction cards are widely used in the United States and elsewhere as a means to attract financial accounts to financial institutions and, in the case of payment cards, as a medium to create small loans and generate interest income for financial institutions.
The financial transaction card industry is subject to certain well-known problems. For example, in the payment card industry it is well-known that at least some persons will engage in fraudulent activities through either the theft of a payment card or a payment card number. The utilization of financial transaction cards in online transactions exacerbates the risk of fraudulent activity. Financial transaction card companies have thus implemented increased security measures to reduce the instances of such fraudulent activity. Many increased security measures utilize a standardized protocol for authenticating a user by communicating transaction information between computer devices and requiring a user to provide authentication credentials (e.g., a user name and/or password) in addition to a payment card number to complete a transaction with a merchant.
However, cardholders often consider increased security measures to be an interference, an inconvenience, or an outright barrier to proceeding with the transaction. Increased security measures may require cardholders to provide additional data (e.g., personally identifiable data or biometric data). Cardholders find it difficult to retain or quickly retrieve such additional data. Other cardholders simply are unhappy with the slow and tedious experience of (sometimes repeatedly) providing additional data. Still others may not wish to share additional data due to trustworthiness concerns. Cardholders tend to terminate transactions because the attendant security measures are overly cumbersome or undesirable. Accordingly, increased security measures reduce the proportion of successful financial transactions, leading to losses for merchants, banks, and other financial entities. Moreover, certain security measures may not operate properly on particular platforms (e.g., a mobile device) leading to further cardholder frustration and resulting in termination of the transaction.